Imperfectly Criminal

by Mary Frame

  Dean returns with my clothes in hand, and I sit up, clutching the sheet to my chest even though it’s way too late for such formalities.

  “If you want to shower,” he says, not meeting my eyes, “the bathroom is just through there.” He points at the door to the side of the bed, offering me an embarrassed smile and a slight blush, which is actually sort of adorable considering he’s normally all calm, cool, collected and generally pissed off. He leaves the folded pile of my clothes at the bottom of the bed before disappearing out the door again, shutting it gently behind him.

  As soon as he’s gone, I roll over and scream into the pillow.

  Then, I very calmly walk into the bathroom, take care of my basic needs, and shower for a good twenty minutes. I use his shampoo and body wash which smells like boy, and I probably enjoy that a little too much. I squeeze some of his toothpaste into my mouth and swish, and then I get dressed. Thank God I wore something normal and not super slutty last night: a pair of skinny jeans and a nice top that’s only slightly hookerish due to the amount of cleavage on display.

  I exit the bathroom and take a moment to look around his room. It’s clean and simple. His bed sits on a simple metal frame. The walls are plain white. There’s a small brown dresser in the corner, and a narrow wood desk with a small black laptop lying shut on top.

  Leaving his room, I discover the rest of his apartment is small, but like his bedroom, modest and clean. Except for the bajillions of locks on the door and the camera in the entryway.

  Dean is sitting on his sofa. It’s obvious he slept there the night before. There’s a pillow and a neatly folded blanket next to him.

  I sit gingerly on the opposite side of the couch and ask, “What happened?”

  “Your friend Lucy called me last night and asked me to get you at that bar. Apparently, you called her in a drunken stupor, and she couldn’t get a hold of the friends you should have been with. She didn’t have a car, and she was worried it would take her too long to get to you. I’m still not sure how she found my number.”

  I smile. “She’s good at things like that.”

  “When I got there,” he continues, “that douchebag Clarence—”

  “Cameron,” I interrupt.

  “Whatever. He was hauling you off somewhere. I intervened and brought you back here. You were totally passed out the entire way, and then once I got you up the stairs, the projectile vomiting began.”

  I cringe. “I’m so sorry,” I say.

  “I really thought I was gonna have to bust out the Latin chants and holy water.”

  I laugh, because if I didn’t, I would probably cry. “Well, I’m glad it didn’t come to that.”

  “How much did you drink?” he asks.

  “Not enough to turn into Pukey McGee.” I lean back on the couch and close my eyes, reliving the night in my mind. “We got there, ordered drinks, I had a martini. I went to the bathroom, but then I ran into Cameron and—”

  “Conner bought you a drink?”

  I open my eyes and turn my head towards him, still leaning back against the couch.

  “Cameron,” I correct although I know he does that on purpose. “And no. I bought myself a beer and drank it back at the table far, far away from him. Although…” I trail off, remembering the rest of the night.

  “What?” Dean asks quietly after a minute.

  “He came over when I was about halfway through the glass.”

  “He had access to your drink.” His eyes are narrowed and pointed straight at me.

  What did I do now? What happened to the nice, blushing Dean who brought me my clothes and averted his eyes when confronted with my half-naked body?

  “No.” I shake my head. I know exactly what he’s insinuating. “Not possible.” I don’t really believe that Cameron spiked my drink, and yet a chill races over my entire body.

  “He roofied you,” Dean says, crossing his arms over his chest and glowering at the coffee table in front of us like the inanimate piece of cheap furniture is the cause of all his woes.

  “No,” I say again.

  “The alternative is that you drank a twelve pack you forgot about.”

  “But,” I sigh. “I had control of my glass the whole time!” Except for when I was leaving and dropped my purse and had to crouch down to retrieve it.

  I’m in full denial mode outwardly, but inwardly, I think hard about that moment. The moment I had my back to him. He had opportunity, sure, but who in the world keeps roofies up their sleeves?

  It’s a stupid question. Of course Cameron would do something like that, he’s the Titanic of douchecanoes, I know this.

  “No,” Dean says, shaking his head. “He could have done it without you noticing. That bar was packed. It just takes a second of distraction.”

  He’s right and I hate that he’s right. It’s really not that much of a stretch. I’m more embarrassed that I was stupid enough to have a drink in an open container in Cameron’s general vicinity. The sadistic bastard probably wanted to get me loaded so he could do what he wanted to me. The thought makes me shiver and a frisson of panic runs down my spine. The memory of Cameron on top of me flips through my brain. I try to shove the memory back, but I can’t. Normally, I excel at repressing those memories and shoving them way, way down. I’m emotionally healthy like that, but right now I’m too tired and hungry and maybe still a little buzzed.

  “Hey,” Dean says. And then he does something I never would have expected from the giant brute: he pulls me into him. Right over the blanket and pillow between us, sending the items bounding to the floor.

  I’m shaking, and my breath is leaving my body in panicked bursts. How freaking awful is this. It’s bad enough that I puked my guts out all over him, now I’m having a giant meltdown like a sissy la-la.

  He’s so big and bulky, a look I never thought I would appreciate on a guy, but with Dean it works. There’s lots of muscle under that T-shirt and I’m getting the pleasure of feeling them with my hands tucked between us and his chest under my cheek since I’m sitting in his lap.

  Oddly enough, thinking about Dean’s muscles distracts me from my thoughts of Cameron, instead of reminding me of him—like what usually happens with guys.

  “It’s okay,” he says after a moment. “Nothing happened.”

  The rumble of his voice in his chest is almost comforting.

  For an infinitesimal second, his arms tighten around me before relaxing again.

  I never would have imagined him as affectionate, but he manages to pull it off without any awkwardness.

  “But it would have,” I say. “If you hadn’t gotten there in time.”

  “Maybe not.” He doesn’t sound convinced.

  “Probably. Cameron’s not a good person.” I chuckle as I say it, like it’s a big joke, but it’s the worst joke in the universe.

  He tenses against me. “Why do you say that?”

  I hesitate. I can’t talk about it.

  I remember, suddenly, that I shouldn’t be able to do this. I shouldn’t be able to sit in some guy’s lap without freaking out. Although, I was already freaking out when he pulled me onto him, so maybe that’s why I’m not wanting to scream and run or flinch and flail.

  The fact that I’m okay with being held by him makes me feel uncomfortable. I untangle myself from him as coolly as possible—which means not cool at all—and sit on the couch far enough away so that we are no longer touching. “He’s just…you know…” A rapist. The word whispers in my mind, and I try to shake it away. “A misogynistic asswipe. He cheated on me, pretended like he really liked me just to get into my pants.” I shrug. “The usual thing.”

  Dean shakes his head. “What happened to Miss ‘I’m an open book’?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re hiding something,” he says.

  “I’m hiding something? This is really coming from you, Mr. Secret McBrooding Pants?”

  This makes him laugh. His head tilts back and the sound is deep and mascul
ine. I like seeing him laugh—he doesn’t do it nearly enough. My eyes are drawn to his strong neck, and I feel a sudden urge to bite it, followed by the urge to smack myself in the face. Stop thinking about him that way. I push the thought away.

  “McBrooding pants,” he repeats and then rolls his eyes. “You’re ridiculous,” he says.

  “Yep,” I agree.

  We’re silent for a moment. I examine my surroundings, but other than the high-tech set up in the entryway, there’s not much to look at. I turn my head towards Dean only to find him staring back at me.

  “Why are you set up like you’re running from the mob?”

  He groans. “Not the mob thing again.” He shrugs. “It’s just a security precaution. I deal with a lot of people’s money and someone tried to rob me once. I got a good deal on a couple of security cameras from a friend. There’s one inside and one outside and the footage is sent wirelessly to my laptop. Better safe than sorry.”

  “Oh.” Tried to rob him? I feel like there’s a story there, but I’m not sure I want to know.

  “Are you hungry? Want to go get some lunch?” he asks.

  I think I love you.

  “Yes,” I say. “That sounds perfect.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Dean

  If you’re going through hell, keep going.

  —Winston Churchill

  I take Freya to a little hole-in-the wall pizza parlor. She practically swoons when we enter the building. The smell of yeast, basil and garlic permeates the air.

  “It smells amazing in here,” she breathes.

  She definitely needs some hangover food.

  I sit her down at a booth and go and put in our order.

  All I can think about while I wait in line is that I really need to kick the shit out of Cameron. I wish I would have done it last night, but it’s better I didn’t. I don’t need to attract any kind of attention to myself, let alone anything of a violent nature. Not that I’m normally a violent person, because despite evidence to the contrary, I’m not.

  But when I saw him, pulling her off into the darkness…and when she told me he might have drugged her…I could have lost my mind.

  The place is packed and it takes a while to get the food. I know Freya must be hungry because when I get back to where she’s sitting, her foot is jiggling up and down and she’s not saying anything.

  I place the little triangular card with our order number on the edge of the table and take the silent time to watch her while she watches for the food.

  Her normally straight hair is still a little damp, and seems to be drying into loose waves. She looks good like this, natural, no makeup. Even with the gray smudges under her eyes, she’s…pretty.

  Who am I kidding? I always find her attractive, no matter how much she pisses me off. Last night she was pretty, too. Even when she was hammered, but before she started puking.

  This morning, when I opened the door and she was practically naked…I only caught a glimpse, but from what I could tell, she’s like a tiny little sprite of perfection. Perfect breasts, perfect narrow waist that flares into hips I would like to grab and then—

  I look away from her, not really liking where my thoughts are going. I don’t have time for a relationship, or anything even close to it and I doubt she returns the sentiment, anyway.

  I wait until the food arrives and she’s eaten a full slice before I ask what I’ve been thinking about all morning. Well, except for the thoughts of her general attractiveness which I have been trying to avoid.

  “So, did you find anything out the other day? Any success with the girlfriends?”

  We haven’t spoken since we agreed to interrogate people close to the victims to try and find a connection other than me.

  “Not really,” she says. She tells me what they both said, which amounts to almost nothing, and she has me check the time I texted Daisy the night of the murder.

  “Do you think that’s important?” I ask, after checking my cell and confirming her story.

  “I don’t know,” she says. “All I know is I don’t really trust Daisy. I mean, I know hippies are all free love and everything, but she seems shady. What about you? Come up with any good leads?”

  I shake my head at her and finish chewing the last bit of my pizza before chucking the crust on the plate.

  “No luck,” I say. “I couldn’t get anyone to talk to me.”

  “Amazing,” she teases, “since you’re so approachable and unassuming.”

  I roll my eyes at her, even though I want to laugh. She’s one of the only people who feels comfortable enough to tease me. Probably because most people find me a little intimidating. Now that I think of it, she’s never seemed frightened of me, at all.

  “An eye roll,” she says. “That’s better than a glare. I call that progress.”

  I glare at her, but she just grins at me around a mouth full of pizza, so I don’t think it had the desired effect.

  “Matt has a twin sister, but I can’t seem to find her anywhere,” I say. “Do you know Elizabeth Ellison?”

  She freezes, a slice of pizza halfway to her mouth.

  “Liz? Liz Ellison?” She drops the pizza. “Matt’s twin sister is Liz the slut?”

  “I’ll take that as a yes?”

  “Uh, yeah, I know her. She’s the one that I caught sleeping with Cameron the douche.” She blinks. “I saw her with her brother a few days before he was killed. The same day I hit you with my car.”

  She tells me about how she was in the bathroom and Liz apologized to her after her date.

  I resist the urge to ask about this date. I also resist the tug of jealousy that pulls at my chest. It doesn’t matter and it’s none of my business.

  She also tells me how Liz had black eyes and seemed upset when she was leaving with her brother.

  “You don’t think it was an accident—you think someone was beating her up? Maybe it was Curtis?”

  Now it’s her turn to roll her eyes at me and my inability to say Cameron’s name.

  “I don’t know. She didn’t say, and I got the impression they were over. I’m not sure it’s relevant to your case. But, maybe I can get her to meet up and see if she knows if her brother had any enemies.” She winces. “I really don’t want to see her again—oh my God!” She sticks her hand out and it covers mine on the table.

  I look down at her hand covering mine. I think this is the first time she’s willingly touched me.

  “I almost forgot. I saw her last night, too.” She removes her hand from mine and then tells me how Liz came over to her table, but then took off immediately after Cameron arrived.

  I nod and listen and we eat in silence for a few minutes. I ponder all of the information we have. It’s not enough.

  “Are you going to finish that?” she asks, pointing at the crust on my plate.

  “Help yourself.” I lift my hands so she can snatch it off my plate.

  “Now what do we do?” she asks me, dipping the crust in ranch and sticking it in her mouth, but not before some of the sauce has fallen on her shirt.

  “I don’t know.” I can’t help but stare at the spot on her chest. She’s a mess, but it’s so cute.

  “Do you have any enemies?”

  “No.”

  “You have something…” I motion to my shirt in the same spot she’s got a dollop of ranch.

  “Oh.” She looks down and grabs a napkin, wiping at it ineffectually, making the white stain spread instead of disappear.

  I try not to laugh.

  “No enemies?” she continues our conversation, throwing the dirty napkin down on her plate. “Maybe someone in your gambling circle who’s lost a lot of money to you?”

  “Well, yeah, a lot of people have lost a lot of money to me. Are you suggesting one of them might be framing me for murder?”

  She shrugs. “Maybe.”

  I shake my head. “I don’t think so. What would be in it for them, other than revenge? They wouldn’t get their money back, and
they would run the risk of being charged with murder. Plus they would have to be totally nuts. I try not to let crazy people into the games.”

  “That’s true, but how do you know if someone is over the deep end?”

  “I guess I don’t.”

  “Can you give me all your gambling records? I can give it to Lucy to go through and she can probably do something fancy with it, like cross-reference it with medical histories and criminal records.”

  “I’m not giving you all my information to pass over to someone I’ve never even met.”

  “Geez, defensive much? Lucy is absolutely trustworthy.”

  “I don’t know that. I have a lot of people’s private information encrypted into files that even I can’t access. I’m not comfortable giving it to anyone.”

  “Okay, fine.”

  We eat in silence for a minute and then I ask, “Any other ideas?”

  She chews up her food and swallows before asking, “Have any other chicks asked for your services?”

  The table next to us, stuffed with tween girls and a disgruntled-looking dad, glances over at us.

  “No.” I give her a dirty look and she just smiles innocently.

  “As a matter of fact,” I tell her, “all of my businesses are starting to suffer. Word is getting around about all of this. My biggest gamblers have pulled out of the last two games. One of them is your buddy Caleb.”

  That stops her. “Cameron?”

  “Yep. Asswipe himself. I’m going to miss taking his money. You can add him to your list of people who’ve lost a lot to me, by the way.”

  “He’ll be back,” she says, with a shake of her head. “He doesn’t have a lot of self-control.”

  That gets my attention. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing, nothing.” She waves a hand at me. “So, are you going to be okay, missing out on all that cash?”

  I don’t know why she’s interested in my finances, but it bothers me more than it probably should.

  “I have savings,” I say quickly. “The real question here is what we’re going to do next.”